1. Technical Field
The subject matter described herein relates to automated collection of information for facilitating the recovery of stolen electronic devices.
2. Description of the Related Art
Laptops, and increasingly other electronic devices such as cell phones, PDAs, smart phones (e.g., BlackBerry™, iPhone™), memory sticks, personal media devices (e.g. iPod™), gaming devices and personal computers, are being remotely tracked so that they can be recovered in the event of theft. Such tracking may be effected by sending location information to a remote storage site or an email server, from which email can later be retrieved.
In some cases, supplementary information is needed to identify the location more precisely, or to identify the illegitimate user of the stolen device. Supplementary information may, for example, include photos of the thief or the surroundings, or an address that is typed in.
Remote keystroke logging software and remote screenshot capture software exist. A drawback with existing screenshot capture devices is that they require excessive bandwidth to transmit the captured data. This can alert a thief, who then may decide to destroy or discard the stolen device. Another limitation is that the majority of screenshots captured may be worthless, making it a time-consuming task to wade through them looking for vital information. A drawback with keystroke logging devices is that they typically capture all keystrokes without discerning the context in which they are typed. Again, it is a time-consuming task to search for and decipher vital information useful for recovering the stolen device, as the useful information may only amount to less than 1% of the total.
Proprietary information is routinely stored on electronic devices such as personal computers, laptop computers and personal digital assistants, and the need to promptly recover such devices is self-evident. Any improvement in the efficiency of recovering such devices is therefore valuable.